finnish society and language (finnish language)
TRANSCRIPT
Finnish Society and Language(Finnish Language)Orientation, Autumn Semester 2021Thursday 26 August
Ph.D. Hanna Jokela, University Lecturer, Finnish Language and Finno-Ugric Languages
• Finnish and other languages
• Languages of Finland
• Some characteristics of Finnish language
• Politeness and communication in Finnish and in Finland
Finnish language in 45 minutes
• The official languages (“national languages”) of Finland are Finnish and Swedish.
• The Saami languages are the languages of the indigenous population of Finland. There are three different Saami languages spoken in Finland: Inari Saami, Skolt Saami and Northern Saami.
• Finnish Romani, Finnish sign language, Finland-Swedish sign language and Karelian have special status.
• Biggest numbers of foreign-language speakers (2019): Russian, Estonian, Arabic, English, Somali (stat.fi)
Languages of Finland
• In addition to the Uralic languages, there are two other language families in Europe: Indo-European and Basque.
• Hungarians, Finns, and Estonians make up the majority of Uralic language (Finno-ugric languages) speakers.
• Baltic-Finnic languages: Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, Veps, Ingrian, Votic, Livonian
• Finnish is also one the Nordic languages.
Uralic language family
• No grammatical gender:hän ’she, he’
• No articles• Long and short vowels and consonants:
tuuli ’wind’, tuli ’fire’ tapaa ’s/he meets’, tappaa ’s/he kills’
• Diphtongs: Suomi, soutaa ’to row’• Case endings: pöydällä, pöydältä, pöydälle, pöydässä…• Synthetic language, various suffixes: Vastaisitko? ’Would
you answer?’
Some characteristics of Finnishlanguage
Finnish words?korkokenkäkukkamekkosuohiihtoyle.fi 26.03.2021
• Original or international?
KÄSI
HOTELLI
KÄSIPYYHERULLAJÄRJESTELMÄ
Finnish words
www.yle.fi
Finnish speech culture: politeness and addressing
• Addressing:- The 2nd person singular pronoun sinä is commonly used; the 2nd person plural pronoun te is more formal- Titles are less frequently used than in many other languages
• Finnish speech culture is similar to Swedish speech culture (languages not related)
• Formality/informality
• Greetings:Moi, hei or hyvää huomenta?
Politeness straregies and addressing in Finnish
• Are there less politeness phrases?
• Listening, talking and interrupting
• Highly respected personal space
• High tolerance of silence
• Silent/shy/friendly/helpful Finns?
Politeness straregies and addressing in Finnish
For more information:
Institute for Languages of Finland (https://www.kotus.fi/en/on_language/languages_of_finland)
